The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards: Rock’s Sleepless Legend

By Marcelo Sonaglioni on May 18, 2025

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The Rolling Stones’ Untamed Rock Icon: Keith Richards’ sleepless records

“Adrenaline is the most amazing thing we have,” Richards told an interviewer in 1992. Indeed, his ability to go without sleep is almost beyond belief. He recorded Before They Make Me Run from 1978’s Some Girls, in a five-day studio binge (“One engineer would flop under the desk and have a kip, and I’d put the other one in and keep going,” he wrote in his book Life). But his actual record is almost twice that long: “Nine days without a wink,” he bragged. “I fell asleep standing up, eventually … I was just putting another cassette back on the shelf, and I was feeling great, and I turned ’round and fell asleep. I fell against the edge of the speaker. Woke up in a pool of blood, wondering, ‘Is that claret?'”

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Keith Richards: The Sleepless Life of a Rock Legend

Keith Richards is no stranger to the chaotic lifestyle that comes with rock and roll fame, and his infamous “days without sleep” have become part of his legend. The Rolling Stones’ guitarist has lived a life of excess, often fueled by late nights and unpredictable schedules. His inability to sleep, whether due to the demands of touring, recording, or his struggles with substance abuse, has been a recurring theme in both his personal life and his music.

In his memoir Life, Richards opens up about his long-standing battle with insomnia, revealing that sleepless nights were a common occurrence, especially during the band’s intense touring schedules. As the Stones traveled from city to city, Richards would often find himself awake in hotel rooms, sleepless, unable to rest due to the adrenaline from the shows or the distractions of the rock and roll lifestyle. The result was a blurred sense of time, where days and nights seemed to blend together.

Behind the Scenes: Keith Richards’ Pre-Show Rituals

Denis O’Regan, who photographed the band during their 1982 European tour, revealed that Richards would typically sleep right before the show, spending the time leading up to it holding court in his room. “Keith would usually stay up until the night before the show, so if we arrived on a Monday and the show was a Wednesday night, he would stay up until Tuesday and sleep until just before the show”, he said.

“A full court of people would come and go, he would always drape scarves over the lamps to create an atmosphere. That was the first thing he did when he went into his room, put the scarves over the lamps and just subdue the lighting and that’s how it was for the next couple of days, with people coming and going, at all hours.”

He went on to talk about his favourite photo that he’d taken of the guitarist, adding, “I love the one of Keith posing with his head on his hands with a cigarette which is one of the early shots like that. It was a bit more rock ‘n’ roll, that was the shot, Keith owned it really” (Ref. The Rolling Stones Keith)

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